How Everything Still Turns to Gold

I felt it in my soul. They knew.
They were singing about awakening.
The words revealing their knowing, 
offering me hope that I wan't the only one 
who "got it."

It was the early eighties, and I in my teens.
A somewhat mystical life, but confined to 
the sanctity of my family.
Early on I learned I could not talk about 
such things. That not every family 
recognized the mystical. That, in fact, 
most were afraid.

Lifetimes of separation. Fear.
Being misunderstood. Misplaced, likely.

But laying on my bed, heart open, the song -
its imperfect grooves casting out the rawness
of the record - illuminated my longing.

The words, with poetic clarity, written on the 
album sleeve,  thumb-tacked to my bedroom wall.
And the lamplight of the hermit,
reminding me I was not alone.

I am now a we, with two offspring still in my home.
They, nearly twenty, are older than I was when 
the song anchored in my being.
It is early morning as we get into my Subaru.
They are not yet drivers, so I dutifully taxi
them to work. A half-hour, one way.

Music is our air. We fill the car with a selection of
the passenger-seat's choosing.
And there is began. The familiar tune...
the beckoning flute, and it calls.

I am clear that I am the lady who's sure
​all that glitters is gold.
And I sing. And remember. The teen, 
the old soul confined to limitation.
My girls carefully applying makeup as I drive.

I remember the journey thus far. The belief
in magic, the denial of my wisdom, the real
life struggles of marriage, parenthood and loss.
Losing my husband and mom too early.

But I still sing and know that if we
listen very hard, the tune will
come to us at last. That I must continue to 
be a rock and not to roll away from who I am
and what I know to be true
as we collectively walk our stairway to heaven.

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